This is The Reason interview with Nick Lesby. Thanks for listening.

This is an audio version of the Reason live stream, which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m.

Eastern on Reason's YouTube channel. This week, my colleague, Zach Weissm. Miller and Liz Wolf,

sat for an in-depth discussion with Swedish economist

Johann Norberg about the lessons to draw from his country's pandemic policies. Unlike many, if not

most governments around the world, Sweden's leaders chose to forego lockdowns of businesses and

schools in the early days of the pandemic.

That policy was controversial, to say the least.

The New York Times in April 2020 called Sweden's the world's cautionary tale, and President

Donald Trump proclaimed that Sweden is paying heavily for its decision not to lock down

as an early wave of

COVID deaths hit Sweden harder than its Nordic neighbors. But today, Sweden's COVID-19 death

rate is not an outlier and its excess death rate from 2020 to the present is the lowest in Europe.

Norberg talks about that and he also points out that

Sweden avoided the economic contraction that its neighboring country suffered, as well as the

learning loss experienced in countries that close schools for months or even years at a time.

Here is the reason interview with Johan Norberg.

Johan, thank you for joining us today.

Thanks for having me on the show.

And to start, Johan, help us understand exactly what the reality on the ground in Sweden was

during the early days of the pandemic.

You were there.

...